OUR VIEW: Employment growth good; effort still necessary

While Gov. Bill Haslam may have been engaging in a little politicking when he described Rutherford County as the job-creation center for the state in a recent visit, he is correct that job-creation news for the county has been positive in 2013.

Job-creation announcements have come from Nissan, Calsonic Kansei and Amazon, and the city of Murfreesboro finally has been able to land the corporate headquarters that it has been pursuing.

Schwan Cosmetics is bringing corporate jobs and production jobs to the city as Murfreesboro becomes the headquarters for its U.S. operations.

Also positive is the role of local educational institutions in job-training and development.

Middle Tennessee State University, Motlow State Community College, the Tennessee Center for Applied Technology in Murfeesboro and Rutherford County Schools are all participating in job-training programs and, in some cases, cooperating in that training.

Haslam announced recently that the state is investing more than $600,000 for purchase of equipment for TCAT in Murfreesboro, and the state is investing millions of dollars in development of a training center in Smyrna that will serve Nissan and other area industries involved in high-tech manufacturing.

Despite all the good news, a few questions do remain about job creation in the county.

At a recent Economic Outlook Conference at MTSU, Reuben Kyle, a retired economics professor at the university, noted that while the county historically has been a good site for job creation, those jobs have not always been high-paying.

Perhaps the arrival of Schwan Cosmetics will mark a swing in that trend, and job creation will be along a broad range of income levels.

While the role of job-training is important for local educational institutions, MTSU in particular should be more involved in job creation.

Faculty members and their students should be bringing their research from the laboratory into the workplace.

The university should be an "incubator" for new products and services.

Some local governments also have invested in "incubator" facilities to ease the transition from good idea to a good product or process for creating a product or service.

Rutherford County has been fortunate during the past few decades to have a diverse economy, ranging from agriculture to manufacturing to health care to finance.

The county, now in an information age, needs to maintain and expand that diversity, so today's workers and tomorrow's workers can find gainful employment.

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OUR VIEW: Employment growth good; effort still necessary

While Gov. Bill Haslam may have been engaging in a little politicking when he described Rutherford County as the job-creation center for the state in a recent visit, he is correct that job-creation